CHAPTER 23
JILLIAN
Something wakes me.
Not a noise. Not really. More like a shift in the air pressure. A tug, faint but insistent, at the base of my spine.
I sit up slowly, pushing my hair out of my eyes. The dome is quiet—just the usual soft hum of the environmental seal and the gentle wheeze of the air filter laboring through Purgonis’ chemically-bruised night. My bunk creaks beneath me. The others are asleep, or pretending to be.
I don’t check the time. Doesn’t matter. The nights here stretch long and strange, like everything on this planet.
What does matter is the way my chest tightens when I glance at the far end of the dome and see the faint shimmer of moonlight through the plastic viewport. And the silhouette standing in it.
Him.
My breath catches. I rise without thinking, bare feet barely making a sound against the metal floor. I pull on a coat—light, useless against the elements but good enough for decency—and slip through the door.
The rain is soft. Not a downpour, not a drizzle. Just that steady, persistent kind of rain that feels like it’s been fallingforever and might never stop. It beads and clings to everything—the cracked domes, the blackened soil, the skeletal remains of old survey rigs. And him.
Maug stands with his back to me. Not moving. Not speaking. Just standing.
He’s bare-chested, arms at his sides, shoulders slack. Water slides down his body in rivulets, soaking the coarse black hair that covers his frame. His back is a map of old scars and fresh ones—the long, crisscrossing lines of past battles, raised and gleaming in the moonlight. The curve of his horns glints silver. His breath curls faintly in the air, steam rising from skin that always seems just a few degrees too warm.
He looks like a war god cast in obsidian.
He looks… alone.
I don’t call out. Don’t make a sound.
I just walk.
The earth squelches beneath my feet, cold and wet. My coat clings to me almost instantly, rain soaking through the thin material. My hair hangs limp around my face. None of it matters. The moment I’m beside him, everything else falls away.
We don’t speak.
He doesn’t look at me at first. Doesn’t react. But I feel the flicker in his breath. The way his fingers twitch at his sides, barely perceptible. The way he knows I’m here.
We stand like that for a while—two figures against the broken horizon, alone but not alone. The silence between us isn’t heavy. It’s not awkward. It just is. Steady. Present.
The moonlight catches on the ridgelines far beyond camp. The crystal vents pulse faintly. The rain traces patterns over the world, and it feels, just for this moment, like Purgonis itself is holding its breath.
He turns.
Slowly. Like the moment is sacred.
His eyes find mine.
Gold, burning low and deep like coals under ash. They search me, not with suspicion, but with something older. Heavier. Like he’s trying to decide if I’m real or another punishment sent to haunt him.
I don't look away.
My chest rises and falls, heartbeat slow but steady. I feel raw. Unfiltered. Like every breath between us could shift the axis of the world. I want to reach out, but I don’t. I don’t want to break the stillness, not yet.
He speaks first. His voice is gravel and wind and regret.
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
I smile, soft. “Neither should you.”
